Almost daily, Mama and Sitti Wasfiyeh would gather with the women in our building who remained in Kuwait. They’d bake bread rather than wait in the bread lines. Despite the uncertainty, people socialized without the weight of financial responsibilities. Iraq’s occupation had the effect of a natural disaster—it allowed us to take a break from the contrived necessities of money. There was a deeply felt dignity in the sense that one’s shelter and sustenance were not mortgaged. We went where we could not have afforded before the invasion, walked into homes where we’d never have been invited, and into establishments that would not have welcomed us during normal times. No one was poor. No one was rich. We just were. And we shared. We ate. We drank. We laughed. We danced. We cried. We dreamed and imagined a better world. Then we waited for fate to fall on our heads from American warplanes.

Newspapers and television pundits spoke of the United States military buildup in Saudi Arabia, but I could not imagine war. I thought it only happened far away, in “war zones” deep in the desert or beyond the orange cones bobbing in the ocean where swimmers were not permitted to go. I was a daughter of refugees chased out of their homes in Palestine, not once but twice, yet I could not conceive of bullets and bombs coming so close. But as time passed, the louder and more animated the pundits became. People who previously spoke only in whispers now spoke openly about the United States destroying Iraq. On the other hand, those who had been emboldened by Saddam Hussein began to shrink. Then they began to flee.

Most foreign workers fled in the early days of the Iraqi occupation, but Deepa stayed almost until the end. She had little to go back to. Parents gone, no kids. Then Um Buraq told her to leave. All those years Um Buraq had been taking half of Ajay’s money, she was actually putting it aside in a savings account for Deepa. She gave it on the condition that Deepa use it to build a house in India, in her home state of Kerala, and she made Deepa promise to put the house title in her own name, not Ajay’s or the name of any man. Since all money had changed to Iraqi currency, the value of the account was half of what it had once been, but it was still more money than Deepa had ever owned—Ajay too—she told me, crying.

I went with Um Buraq to the airport on the day Deepa and Ajay left. It was October 20, 1990. We waited five hours for two available seats on Indian Airlines, which set a world record for the most people evacuated by a civilian airline. Um Buraq bade farewell to her faithful friend and companion; it was the only time I ever saw Um Buraq cry.

About six weeks after Deepa and Ajay left, my brother returned from Amman. Jehad’s university was closed for winter break, and the United States had given Saddam one month to withdraw from Kuwait. Jehad warned us that the United States would attack and probably wipe us all out if Saddam stayed. I disagreed. I thought Saddam was invincible. I believed he’d be the Arab leader who would finally defeat Western imperialists and Zionist colonizers. My recent interest in politics made me feel smart to speak with my brother with such a vocabulary.